03 March 2011

Because we as a society have refused to listen to our climate scientists, Mother Nature is now in the driver's seat.

I have been really busy lately with my new HD film about the pine beetle pandemic in the Rocky Mountains of North America. Current social and geopolitical issues however have allowed (demanded) that I take the time to remind everyone of the profound importance of climate change to the human species.We know why Wisconsin, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Iran, (and the rest of us) are in such a mess. It is the same reason as why we were in such a mess in the U.S. in the 1960s, the 1920s, and the 1860s. Powerful groups of people then decided that "all" of us should behave the same way: "their" way. The result? Civil liberties are (were) disrupted, wars erupted.

“Things” however, need to be put into perspective. Because we as a society have refused to listen to our climate scientists for the last 30 years, Mother Nature is now in the driver's seat. Our climate has changed. It has changed greatly, profoundly and irreversibly in time frames that matter to us humans. Impacts today are affecting societies around the world -- all societies. Wars, drought, food shortages, extreme weather events including massive snowstorms and floods, all are being blamed in part or in whole on climate change.

The extreme ranges of the climate modeling projections -- between 1.4 and 11.5 degrees of warming over the next century -- have a meaning that has been utterly and completely lost on our society. The 1.4 degrees of warming was how much our climate would change in a perfect world where there were no messy feedback mechanisms and the entire spectrum of scientific guesses were correct.

The 11.5 degrees of warming included some of those messy feedback mechanisms, but climate scientists were quick to remind us, repeatedly, that there were unknown unknowns out there that they did not take into account. They also told us that some things, like dynamical ice sheet disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were also not represented in the models because they were known unknowns. The scientists knew about them, but they did not know enough to make educated decisions, so they left them out.

Three decades of intensive scientific research, possibly more science than on any one issue ever, is now being radically realized in the physical world. Climate change is happening now. It is large and violent. It is happening at the upper limits of the science projections, which means it is happening sooner, faster, and with greater impacts than the “average” scenarios told us about.

Adaptation is simply too late for what has already happened. We cannot undo the vast amount of damage we are discovering. Adaptation was something viable for the low and middle ranges of the projections. These are not my words, but words that have been repeated over and over again.. But we as a society chose not to listen.

This is not to say that many individuals haven't indeed heard what is being said. A significant portion of society certainly understands the seriousness of the situation that our scientists have been telling us about for decades; when will the rest of use listen? We have been warned that adaptation will only be possible if we act soon to limit warming to the low end of the projections. Remember? That was 20 years ago when Kyoto was created!

NASA Earthlights: Satellite images now help scientists adjust for the urban heat island effect to make their global temperature evaluations more accurate.

Beyond dangerous climate change:

An article in the prestigious Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (founded by King Charles II in 1660, the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences) tells the story of exactly how critical the climate crisis has so rapidly become.

These researchers from the Universities of Manchester and East Anglia tell us that the 2 degrees C threshold to prevent dangerous climate change (3.6 degrees F above pre-industrial times, about 1.8 or 2.0 degrees F warmer than now), beyond which we can consider changes to be dangerous, should no longer be seen as such.

Because evidence shows very distinctly that our climate is changing at the very high end of the range of projections, faster and with greater impacts already occurring, this 2 degrees C threshold should be considered the tipping point beyond which “Extremely Dangerous Climate Change” (not my words, the scientists’ words) will take place. (1)

Another Article in Philosophical Transactions, by researchers whose alma maters include Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Tyndall Center for Climate Research, reminds us that, “Most analysts would agree that the current state of [most of the] efforts to reduce greenhouse gases make the chances of keeping below 2 degrees C extremely slim.” (2)

In the far north, because of warming that is two to four times greater than Earth’s average warming, forest fires have doubled since the 1960s.

The carbon that the world forgot:

We have all heard that the Amazon is a very important place when it comes to climate. We know that the Amazon is a global climate regulator that we cannot live without. It stores incredible amounts of carbon to help regulate the temperature of Earth. It generates rainfall and water. It cools the planet with its greenness and humidity.

One of the first things that our climate scientists recognized three decades ago was that the interior of continents would dry with warming and that this would mean bad things for the Amazon. But it also would mean bad things for the interior of other continental locations.

One thing that we did not know 30 years ago was how much carbon is stored in the northern forests of the world. The forests of the north, the boreal or taiga, hold nearly twice the amount of carbon as do the tropical forests of the world.

In Alaska, as reported in Nature Geoscience in December, the boreal forest has changed from a carbon sink to a carbon source. The boreal forests spread across 4.2 billion acres in the furthest northern reaches of the world. Nearly one quarter of Earth’s land is covered by boreal forests. Alaska’s boreal forests are in trouble, and if the rest of the world's boreal forests, with nearly twice the carbon as the world's tropical forests, have not already behaved similarly to Alaska's boreal, they soon will.

In the far north, because of warming that is two to four times greater than Earth’s average warming, forest fires have doubled since the 1960s. Not only this, but large fires have doubled in frequency as well. Warming is the cause. Warming means drought, even if rainfall is normal, a warmed climate evaporates more -- a lot more. More importantly though, it is not just the trees that burn and release their carbon back to the atmosphere. The soils are burning too.

Northern forest soils are chock full of carbon. Because of the slow decomposition rate in the north country (which is ice- and snow-covered much of the year) organic material decomposes slowly. In addition, a great deal of the northern forest is underlain by melting permafrost.

This investigation, carried out by the University of Guelph in Ontario, the U.S. Geologic Survey, U.S. Forest Service, and the University of Maryland, looked at the predominant boreal forest type in Alaska, made up mostly of black spruce. This type of forest is struggling on the edge of survival in the far north. It is generally sparse, short, ragged, twisted, leaning, and gnarly. To compound the drying because of a longer warm season caused by climate change, permafrost is melting. Its water drains away and leaves soils even dryer.

Much of the melting permafrost is made of peat or peat-like material. Much of peat is made up of that wonderful matt of mosses and lichens that grows on the ground in the North. These peats only partially decompose when they die because they become entombed in ice before the decomposition process can complete and there they stay for thousands of years Once melted and dried, if fires do not release their carbon, decomposition does.

Burn in the Boreal Forest. This fire was not extreme because the smallest branches on these black spruce have not burned. Burning of the forest floor is evident in this scene in the middle lower right where some charring still shows. The green moss at bottom was not burned. Also evident is the change from lichens and mosses to grasses. Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.

So we have several things going on here to cause the north, the great boreal forest, to change from a carbon sink to a carbon source -- and a big carbon source at that. More fires are burning more trees. These trees are burned up and are not sequestering carbon. Late season fires, that burn deeper into peat rich soils because late in the season those soils are at their driest, have increased four fold since the 1960s, and more large fire are burning deeper into carbon rich peat soils that are no longer entombed in ice because the permafrost is melting. (3)

Drought is rapidly increasing in the Amazon. The rain forest is dying off. A hundred year drought is not an easy thing to live through if you are a tree.

Billions of trees are dead in the Amazon -- now:

From the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, published in the journal Science this month: In 2005, the Amazon had a 100-year drought. An event like this is supposed to be a once in a hundred-year occurrence; more accurately, an event like this has a one percent change of occurring in any one given year. So the chance that the Amazon would have another such event five years later is quite low. Except during an abrupt climate change. Not only has it happened, but the 2010 drought was likely more than half again as extreme as the 2005 drought.

What has been projected in the models is happening now. Drought is rapidly increasing in the Amazon. The rain forest is dying off. A hundred year drought is not an easy thing to live through if you are a tree. The 2005 event was devastating to the Amazon forest. But the death of trees is just the beginning. What does this mean for the critical climate control system that is the Amazon rain forest? You know, the one that sequesters so much CO2 that it is indispensable?

The authors say: "Having two events of this magnitude in such close succession is extremely unusual, but is unfortunately consistent with those climate models that project a grim future for Amazonia."

Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.

They also tell us that their analysis does not consider forest fires caused by the drought conditions. In an article in the U.K. Guardian, Lewis is quoted as saying the number of trees that died in the 2010 drought alone was "in the low billions of trees."

These researchers from the University of Leeds in the UKL estimate that the 2010 drought will be responsible for 8 billion tons of CO2. The Amazon biosystem normally sequesters 1.5 billion tons of CO2 per year. Along with the 2005 drought, the Amazon forest was responsible for 13 to 14 billion tones of CO2 emissions, or will be over the next dozen or so years as the trees decay. Thirteen billion tons of CO2 is almost a decade’s worth of sequestration from one of the largest single sinks in the world. Thirteen billion tons is also two years worth of CO2 emissions from all of the U.S. Thirteen billion tons is 42 percent of mankind's annual global CO2 emissions. (4)

From the Leeds University press release:

Two unusual and extreme droughts occurring within a decade may largely offset the carbon absorbed by intact Amazon forests during that time. If events like this happen more often, the Amazon rainforest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change, to a major source of greenhouse gasses that could speed it up.

These two massive carbon sinks, the boreal forests of the North, and the Amazon, representing the majority of carbon sinks on land and about a quarter of Earth's carbon sinks, were not even dreamed of flipping so soon.

Climate scientists have been telling us that the impacts are more severe, longer lasting, and even permanent on time scales that matter to humans.

Like a bat out of climate Hell:

Climate scientists have been telling us since the turn of the 21st century that climate change is worse than they thought; that their models were conservative, climate was changing faster than they understood, the changes were greater than they projected. They have been telling us that the impacts were (are) more severe, longer lasting, and even permanent on time scales that matter to humans.

They have been telling us that Earth’s environmental systems are at risk, that the functioning of our planet, that functionality that fostered complex human society, would forever change, in time frames that mattered to the human race. They have been telling us that the time frame is getting shorter too, and that it matters now to our generation, the current generation, not to our children’s or our grandchildren’s generations.

They have been telling us that insect infestations would be greater on a warmer planet. The forests of the world are in a shambles because of warming. Just in the Rocky Mountains of North America, 64 million acres are dead or dying from the attack of a native bark beetle.

The mountain pine beetle is out of control because its only enemy is extreme cold. The extremes of cold required to kill the beetle have disappeared in the Rockies because of warming that is greater than twice the world average. This outbreak is 20 times larger than anything ever before, is still underway, and is in fact out of control. Forest professionals say that they see no reason why the attack will not entirely circumnavigate the North American continent, to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. (5)

Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.

Greenland melt and ice discharge have more than tripled since the 1990s. (6) Antarctica was not supposed to begin losing ice until 2100, but has now caught up with Greenland. (7) Arctic sea ice is melting 70 years ahead of schedule. (8) Carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than the long-term average for the last 610 million years, since plants colonized land. (9) Current CO2 atmospheric concentrations are as high as any time in the last 15 million years. (10) Global temperature is within one degree C of being as high as it has been in 1.35 million years. (11)

The last time it was as warm as it will be by mid century, sea level was 70 feet higher. The last time it was as warm as it will be by 2100, even with serious and aggressive greenhouse gas emission reductions, sea level was 200 feet higher. (12) CO2 emissions are rising faster than the IPCC worst-case scenario. (13) The last time Arctic sea ice was absent from the Arctic was 14 million years ago. (14)

Sea level was virtually static for most of the last 2,000 years, but now is rising 20 to 25 times faster than it was during most of the 19th and 20th centuries, at 3.4 to 3.7 mm per year. (15) When sea level rise reaches 7 mm per year, our barrier islands and coastal wetlands will disappear irreversibly. (16)

Sea level jumped 10 feet in a century or maybe 50 years or less during the last interglacial warm period 121,000 years ago, because of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, when Earth was within 1 degree C of being as warm as it is today. (17) Warming ocean currents in the Antarctic are melting the underside of the exposed part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet so alarmingly fast (say the scientists) that it has allowed cryologists (ice scientists) to speculate that the a current collapse may already be underway. (18)

Seventy-five percent of complex Caribbean reefs were destroyed over the last 20 years by warmer waters and higher acidity and 2010 saw the worst bleaching events across the world that have ever been recorded. (19)

This is the melting Greenland Ice Sheet on the west coast of Greenland. Dust deposition is revealed as the ice melts rapidly. This photo was taken about one mile onto the ice sheet, near Kangerlussaug, August 2000. Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.

Methane venting from vast storage of Pleistocene deposits in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, frozen during the last 3 million years of ice ages, has now reached a level that is equal to all other methane venting from all of Earth’s oceans combined. (20)

Primary productivity in our oceans has declined 40% since 1950. (21) The life of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased significantly because of warming. About half of CO2 will stay in our skies for 300 years. Half of the remaining will stay there for 10,000 years and the other half will stay there forever, or hundreds of millions of years, whichever comes first. (22)

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, in an article published in April of 2010, says that 97 to 98 percent of climate scientists consider the tenets of the IPCC to be valid. Of the 2 to 3 percent that do not, 80 percent have published fewer than 20 papers on climate change, whereas in the 97 to 98 percent group only 10 percent have published fewer than 20 papers. (23)

The latest discoveries show in terrifying detail that we are straddling the worst-case scenario modeled so far.

The result?

Climate scientists, economists and sociologists have been telling us that climate change would create wars across the world over oil, water, and food. They have been telling us that environmental systems would fail, breadbaskets would change to deserts, that sea level rise would displace hundreds of millions, that anarchy would rein. They have been telling us that economies would collapse, social systems would no longer function, and that the basics of society would fail. That’s the good news.

The latest discoveries show in terrifying detail that we are straddling the worst-case scenario modeled so far. But things are not going as we thought. Our society generally has the understanding that we can easily conquer climate change through green behavior. The changes we have been told would happen assume that our society will aggressively reduce our collective carbon footprints and by so doing, impacts would fall along the lower end of the range of damages.

Adaptation is a familiar part of the discussion. We can all adapt to different situations easily enough. It all seems so plausible. But earth systems have already been impacted, and as most of us have previously understood, according to the projections, these things were supposed to happen generations in the future.

What have we learned from climate scientists?

Every time (or uncomfortably often) that climate change specialists across this great planet tell us something about climate change, those things turn out to be understatements. They end up being conservative. The results end up being more extreme, they happen sooner with greater impacts, and with more unexpected surprises: bad surprises.

So really: What have we learned from climate scientists?

Climate change has destroyed the functionality of two of the greatest carbon sinks on the planet, generations ahead of what we understood to be the schedule. The additional carbon added to the atmosphere every year caused by the destruction of the forest carbon sinks, in a feedback loop of planetary scale, is larger than the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the United States.

The minimum target warming of 2 degrees C, that we thought we were shooting for to prevent dangerous climate change, is now out of reach. And most important, as a society we have dismally failed to act soon enough to limit impacts to the low end of the spectrum.

We cannot put the forests back together again in time frames that matter, but we may be able to prevent what will inevitably be greater impacts.

Despair or act?

If most of us jump off of a cliff right now, maybe we can bring our greenhouse gas emissions under control. Or maybe there is a better way to fix our climate. The challenge we face is no greater than challenges our society has faced before. An extremely controversial example that illustrates this point well is the means by which we ended World War II.

Hypothetical knowledge concerning the atomic bomb was available to scientists long before WWII. It took a very large amount of effort to bring this hypothetical knowledge into existence, but it was a task deemed worthy because of the great risks perceived at the time.

Climate scientists understood the risks and impacts of climate change literally decades ago. It is now becoming apparent that the current impacts reveal the risks from climate change may be far greater than those posed by world domination by oppressive leadership. Extremely Dangerous Climate Change is real. We cannot put the forests back together again in time frames that matter, but we may be able to prevent what will inevitably be greater impacts.

The solutions to fix climate change exist in academia already, as they did with the solutions to fix WW II prior to the war. All we need are a few “Manhattan Projects” to realize these solutions. And like the atomic bomb, it is inevitable that such great leaps in scientific knowledge will prove highly valuable to our society. Not so much like the actual bomb itself; it was the great advances in our society allowed by the greater understanding of atomic physics that was so enlightening.

[Bruce Melton is a registered professional engineer, environmental researcher, trained outreach specialist, and environmental filmmaker. He has been translating and interpreting scholarly science publications for two decades. His main mission is filming and reporting on the impacts of climate changes happening now, unknown to the greater portion of society. Austin, Texas is his home. His writing and films are on his website.]

References:

Please read some of these yourselves. Most of them are not that difficult to comprehend, although there are always a few that are difficult. Reading these findings in the academic journals themselves lends an enormous amount of credibility to the issue. There is also an enormous amount of information that is included in these findings that is not included in my writing. Fascinating is a poor descriptor for these discoveries, and the volume of new and almost completely never heard of knowledge coming from our climate science community today, that is so, so little picked up in the popular media, is simply astounding.

Onward Through the Blog

The Rag Blog is a reader-supported newsmagazine produced by activist journalists committed to progressive social change. The Rag Blog is published by the New Journalism Project, a 501(c)(3) Texas non-profit.

New Journalism Project, inc.P.O. Box 16442Austin, Texas 78761-6442

THE RAG: A FilmPart I of a documentary filmabout the life and times ofAustin's pioneering undergroundnewspaper, The Rag (1966-1977),by People's History in Texas. The Rag Blog and Rag Radio are a digital-era rebirth of The Rag.

Receive Regular E-Mail Notices About What's New on The Rag Blog

Comment Policy: This blog enforces a specific comment policy that prohibits personal attack, goading and harassment, and other malicious remarks. We will delete remarks considered inappropriate, at the discretion of the editors. We will also delete all commercial solicitations.

BOOKS / Alan Wieder : Paul Buhle's 'Radical Jesus: A Graphic History of Faith' by Alan Wieder / The Rag Blog. Noted historian Paul Buhle, who has published an acclaimed series of nonfiction comics, is one of the most prolific and insightful critics from the American left. "Radical Jesus," which communicates the social message of Jesus Christ in comic format, investigates the inequalities that exist in the world through a theological lens.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Israel, Hillel, and Idolatry by Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog. Hillel International, the "home" for many Jewish college students of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, has been beset with controversy about when uncritical support among American Jews for Israel becomes "idolatry of the State."

Paul Krassner : Is There a Doctor in the House? by Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog. The Coachella Valley in Southern California hosted a massive four-day health clinic that helped more than 2,500 uninsured patients. Krassner points out that California leads the nation in people without health insurance and says that "the insurance industry has a preexisting condition known in technical terminology as greed."

Kate Braun : Winter Solstice Falls on Saturn's Day by Kate Braun / The Rag Blog. Our celebrations during the Winter Solstice take from many traditions, including the Roman Saturnalia, Druid customs, the German "Yule," and the birth of Jesus; and it was Queen Victoria who popularized the lighted Christmas tree.

Allen Young : Ralph Dungan, the 'Good Liberal' by Allen Young / The Rag Blog. A recent obituary of Ralph Dungan, one of President John F. Kennedy's top aides who later served as ambassador to Chile, reminds Allen of a revealing experience he had with the man referred to by a historian as a "good liberal."

Ed Felien : A Good [Angry White] Man With a Gun by Ed Felien / The Rag Blog. Paul Anthony Ciancia considered himself a "good man with a gun" -- a warrior against the traitors who were taking over our government, bankrupting our currency, and trying to establish a New World Order -- when he walked into the Los Angeles airport and opened fire with an assault rifle.

Lamar W. Hankins : Right-Wing Rants and the Abominable Straw Man by Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog. The Internet is a marvelous tool when used honestly and correctly, and with recognition of its limitations. But it is also home to angry rants, often from the far right, that make ridiculous claims -- like the one (that actually originated on a satirical site) saying that the Obama administration was setting up gasoline stations to provide free gas to low-income [read: black] people.

Harry Targ : My Nelson Mandela by Harry Targ / The Rag Blog. An irony of 21st century historical discourse is how real historic figures -- like the late Nelson Mandela -- get lionized, sanitized, and redefined as defenders of the ongoing order rather than activists who committed their lives to revolutionary change.

Michael James : Back to Uptown, 1965-1966 by Michael James / The Rag Blog. Mike continues his remarkable memoir, accompanied -- and inspired by -- photos from his upcoming book. His adventures -- and the making of an activist -- continue as he heads back to Uptown Chicago, "progressing along my path with another left turn and a big step into America."

Alice Embree : Chile and the Politics of Memory by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog. Chileans went to the polls Sunday and appear to be reelecting Socialist president Michelle Bachelet on the 40th anniversary of the bloody U.S.-supported coup against Socialist president Salvador Allende. Alice writes about the dramatic contradictions in Chilean politics and history.

Paul Krassner : A Tale of Two Alternative Media Conferences by Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog. Paul remembers the original Alternative Media Conference in June 1970 at Goddard College in Vermont -- and it was a wild and wooly affair headlined by the likes of Ram Dass, Harvey Kurtzman, and Art Spiegelman -- as the college hosts another conference keynoted by progressive radio host Thom Hartmann.

Harry Targ : STEM and the Tyranny of the Meme by Harry Targ / The Rag Blog. From the fear of "falling behind the Soviets" to the missile gap and, more recently the wars on drugs and terrorism, the fear of falling behind some fictional adversaries is an ongoing "meme" used by economic, political, and military elites. The latest? Now it's the "STEM crisis" and the fear that we're falling behind other nations in science and technology .

Alice Embree : Anne Lewis' New Website Brings Austin Movement History to Life by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog. Noted documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis has created a website called Austin Beloved Community that uses audio, film, photos, maps, and personal recollections to create a "digital collage" about the struggle for social and economic justice in Austin from the 1880s to the present. Alice interviews Lewis about the unique project.

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Marc Myers Tells Us 'Why Jazz Happened' by Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog. Ron reviews a new book on America's own music in which Marc Myers "provides the reader with a deep, rich, and broad perspective on the confluence of jazz and U.S. history in the decades following World War Two."

David McReynolds : We Are All Wounded Veterans by David McReynolds / The Rag Blog. Long-time pacifist writer and activist McReynolds says there's something "infinitely sad" about the recent celebration of Veterans Day. "In the bad wars -- which are the only wars we have fought for some time now -- there is the terrible knowledge that the enemy was never really the enemy," he says.

Michael James : Going Off Campus, 1965 by Michael James / The Rag Blog. Mike continues to share experiences and images from his rich history as an activist and adventurer -- that will be published in an upcoming book, "Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul." Here Mike reports on the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, community organizing in Oakland, and his travels across the country in a 1957 Plymouth station wagon "drive-away."